By Catholic Wise Guy
I had a long and beautiful relationship with baseball, and it pains me to say, “Don’t Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Forget the peanuts and cracker jacks, I’m not root, rooting for my home team or any team, not even the Cubs. One, two, and three strikes and baseball was out.
The third strike happened in June of 2023. Baseball went down swinging when she honored the gay pride, anti-Catholic hate group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at a Los Angeles Dodgers game. I was a faithful Catholic and baseball gave me no choice but to leave her. And I don’t plan to come back. I think about our years together, clutch my rosary, and become teary-eyed.
Baseball and I courted when I was a boy and tagged along with my father to Cubs games. We rode the South Shore to downtown Chicago and took the elevated to Wrigley field. An ardent fan, my dad taught me the game and how to fill out a baseball scorecard. I was hooked and followed the Cubs on TV and radio and scored their games.
Later I went to the games with my friends, driving to Wrigley and struggling to find a parking spot, sometimes getting boxed in amongst the crazy network of small parking lots. Watching the Cubbies in the bleachers and drinking beer more than compensated for the challenges of the trip.
Then my wife and kids pilgrimaged with me to Wrigley, staying in a cheap hotel downtown and making a weekend of it. This gave us time to see less important sights in Chicago, such as the Museum of Art, the Museum of Science and Industry, and Shedd Aquarium. Sometimes we stopped by the Picasso sculpture in Daly Plaza and pondered its meaning.
When I struggled with life, baseball was a friend, consoling and diverting me, helping me focus on the good things. Our national pastime helped me live my good life.
When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, I was mystically transported to baseball heaven. Don’t know if this fits within the theology of the Church but I believe baseball heaven is part of the real heaven.
The first strike against baseball happened in the spring of 2021 when she moved the All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver. I did not plan to attend the game, so the location made no difference, but I decided to investigate this highly unusual action. Were problems discovered with the recently constructed Braves Stadium Truist Park? Was the Braves’ owner misbehaving? Had the city of Atlanta (or surrounding counties) screwed up?
Turns out none of these were the reason. The explanation for this draconian move was that Georgia had enacted a law called the “Election Integrity Act of 2021.” The law is 98 pages long and few people have read it, including me. (How many people in MLB have?) I studied the summaries of the law and concluded the purpose was to streamline voting procedures and minimize fraud. The background for the law was the 2020 election in which Covid turned Georgia and all the states into administrative turmoil with unprecedented absentee/mail-in voting as well as massive in-person voting outside of election day. The law seems to be a lessons-learned action, trying to prevent a repeat of the voting fiascoes in 2020. The majority of American would agree with the state of Georgia and the Wise Guy that the law is entirely reasonable. Any election law must always balance voter accessibility with the possibility of fraud, and the law seemed a well thought out compromise.
Baseball took the opposite approach, siding with the minority of the population. And the Woke Left. The commissioner Rob Manfred said that moving the All-Star game was “the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport…Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box…Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support.”
So how did the election in 2022 turn out? Was voting suppressed as MLB and others predicted it would be? No, despite being a midterm election in which turnout is lower than in general (presidential) elections turnout was higher in 2022 than in 2020. These results prove that baseball swung and missed when it swatted at the Georgia “Election Integrity Act of 2021.” MLB has not apologized to the state of Georgia. No attempt has been made to move a future All-Star game back to Atlanta.
Baseball fouled off many pitches when teams began hosting Gay Pride events. Now every major league team does it except for Texas. Even my Cubs. I tried not to be offended but realize there’s never been a Catholic Pride night, or a Pro-Life Pride night. Are there any Pro-Family nights? The behavior of baseball management puzzles me more than the Picasso statue.
Back to the Indulgent sisters. They indulge in everything and anything but the truth. They take pride in their anti-Catholic hate and baseball cannot be unaware of the message they send to Catholics and other people of good will.
So goodbye baseball. No more ballgames for me, no more trips to Wrigley, no more singing our second national anthem during the seventh-inning stretch. I sincerely pray you leave your virtue-signaling darkness and return to the light.
Peace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Catholic Wise Guy is an Indiana writer who has retired from a financial management career within the government and Church. He writes from a traditional Catholic perspective sprinkled with comedy, satire, and irony. His anchors are the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and his goal is to offer a widow’s mite of wisdom to the world. You can read more of his work at catholicwiseguy.com.